Cringe Humor on Screen and in Digital Media: Pragmatic Perspectives

“This timely edited volume offers an impressive collection of pragmatic and interactional approaches to the study of cringe humour in pop culture. It unites leading experts in humour research to carefully probe the genre-specific and socio-cultural conditions that shape embarrassment humour on television and social media. Featuring compelling takes on the strategic design patterns and complex audience effects that give rise to cringe humour today, the book is highly recommended to anyone remotely interested in the interplay between language and humour.” (Christian Hoffmann, Senior Lecturer at the University of Augsburg (Germany) and editor of “Focus on Language and/in Film”)

“This most significant contribution to the field of humor studies sheds light on the hitherto under-researched (albeit ubiquitous) concept of cringe humor, bringing together diverse and fascinating approaches to its pragmatic analysis. If cringe humor often causes feelings of embarrassment or awkwardness to its recipients, including humor scholars, after reading this book we will definitely feel less awkward and more enlightened!” (Villy Tsakona, Professor at the University of Athens (Greece) and author of “Exploring the Sociopragmatics of Online Humor”)

“An impressive collection of pragmatic and interactional approaches to the study of cringe humour in pop culture. Highly recommended to anyone remotely interested in the interplay between language and humour.”—Christian Hoffmann, Senior Lecturer at the University of Augsburg, Germany

“This most significant contribution to the field of humor studies sheds light on the hitherto under-researched (albeit ubiquitous) concept of cringe humor.”
—Villy Tsakona, Professor at the University of Athens, Greece

This volume is the first book-length study of 21st-century English-language cringe humor on screen and in digital media. The book includes quantitative and qualitative analyses of verbal and multimodal cringe humor by international linguists interested in its conditions of emergence and success. It examines the sociocultural variables involved in its reception and sheds new light on audience reactions—from alignment to disaffiliation and resistance to empathy. This book reveals that, while not unanimously championed, cringe humor thrives in the 21st century, drawing on its inherent ambivalence and leveraging the affordances of new media to navigate the post-politically correct ethical complexities of laughing at embarrassing behavior. With its cross-disciplinary, pragmatically grounded approach, this book will interest scholars and students in Linguistics, Media and Cultural Studies, and Psychology.

Virginie Iché is Associate Professor of English Linguistics at Université de Montpellier Paul-Valéry, France. She authored L’esthétique du jeu dans les Alice de Lewis Carroll (2015) and co-edited (with S. Sorlin) The Rhetoric of Literary Communication (2022).

Célia Schneebeli is Associate Professor of English Linguistics at the Université Bourgogne Europe, France. She researches online discourse and discourse in interaction from a pragmatic perspective. She has published on impoliteness, humor, stance-taking, and image use in digital discourse.

Lynn Blin is Honorary Associate Professor in Linguistics and Translation at Université de Montpellier Paul-Valéry, France. She has published work on Alice Munro and Lydia Davis, and more recently on the ethics of laughter in the works of Ricky Gervais, Louis C.K. and David Sedaris.